Bookish Thoughts

I can't remember the last time I was this conflicted about a book. I'm currently re-watching the second season of The Witcher. When it first came out, I assumed it was based on Blood of Elves, so I read that book. I then learned it was based on both that book and this book. So I decided to read this book with the rewatch to see what I missed. It started off great. I recognized an early scene in the book from the TV show, and I was so excited to spend more time with those characters. But then the book delved into politics with so many characters I had trouble keeping them straight. It turned into a a bit of a slog - though at least part of that was because my life got so busy I had a hard time finding time to read the book. By the end, I actively disliked the book and was kicking myself for having already bought the next one in the series. I should have waited. Then that night I watched the next episode, and a lot of backstory from the book clicked into place. I'm more excit...

This was a really sweet coming of age tale about finding your way and finding your family. Aprils' mother walked out when she was little and her father wasn't much more present. By the time she's sixteen, April is basically on her own, stuck in a small town where everyone looks down on her and even her father mostly pretends that she doesn't exist. And then she realizes that she can leave, too. So April heads out for life on the road, working odd jobs, writing and singing songs, making friends and fleeing before anyone can get too close. And through it all her music sustains her. My favorite part of this book, hands-down, was the soundtrack. April's love of music, and the way the author uses it to set the scene and drill right into her emotional state was fantastic. I kept having to put the book down so I could bring up songs on youtube and listen to them while I read certain passages. This was just an overall enjoyable book. I had a lot of sympathy for April being ...

My love for this book is in direct opposition to how long it took me to read it. I heard about it years ago, and I knew that I had to read it. Fairy tales and nested tales and Catherynne Valente are three of my favorite things. There was no question that I would love it. But other books always seemed to take precedence. And then the pandemic happened and Valente started reading this book a bit at a time in a nightly video. So I bought it, fully intending to read along with her. Except that in March of 2020, my life was even crazier than most peoples and committing to a 45 minute video every day was out of the question.  And so the book sat on my shelf for nearly two years. I knew I would love it. I also knew I'd want to be able to sink into it. And I could never quite find enough time to devote to it. Finally, at the beginning of this year, I decided to start watching Valente's videos. They were great, filled with behind the scenes info about the book itself. Not to mention the...

This was one of three free novellas provided by Tor.com this month. It was bundled with A Psalm for the Wild Build and Unlocked which highlighted the similarities between the three stories. All of them concern a future where humanity is grappling with mechanical life. In Chambers' story, the robots achieved sentience and abandoned humans to their own devices, only for a human and robot to reconnect centuries later. In Scalzi's story, robots are provided as disability aids. They're fully controlled by humans who can't otherwise participate in society. This story is a bit more classic, with robots serving as a labor force and humanity beginning to grapple with how to extend rights to them. All three books ask what it means to be a person, but this one asks that question the most directly. A robot has been convicted of murder and a new lawyer decides to file an appeal, believing he didn't get a fair trial the first time around. Questions arise about the equality betw...

This is one of my favorite books, so I clearly had to read the graphic novel version. It's a good story to revisit every now and then, and this edition makes that a lot easier. Since so much of the information is conveyed through images, reading it is a lot quicker. Of course, this being an adaptation, a lot of things got left out. I know the story well enough to have recognized all the omissions. The story still works well, but I'll always think the original has more depth.   Overall, it's a good adaptation of a really important novel. And if the new format helps it reach new audiences, that can only be a good thing.

I read Scalzi's Lock In right at the beginning of the pandemic. It posits a future world, about twenty years after a pandemic has come through, killing 1% of the population and leaving another 1% paralyzed. It ended up being a lot lighter than I expected, which was for the best given my whole state of mind at that time. But this companion book takes a closer look at the pandemic itself and the immediate response and aftermath. The crazy part is that it was written in 2014, and still got a bunch of stuff right. It's always so weird when science fiction starts to read more like historical fiction. It becomes a fun exercise in looking at which predictions were correct and which were wrong. Scalzi's pandemic hit the globe much more consistently, having started at an international scientific conference. So the initial impact is a lot bigger. But it still comes in waves, like the real pandemic did. And there's still an incredible rallying of everyone. Another interesting dif...

I'm not entirely sure what I expected from this book, but it's not what I got. I'd only read one other story by Sarah Gailey - a dystopian Western - and this was so far removed from that it left my head spinning. Which doesn't make this bad. If anything it speaks to Gailey's versatility. And I'll have a better sense of what to expect (or not expect) from her future books. This is billed as a murder mystery at a magical school. A sort of fantasy noir, with this emphasis on the noir. So where I was expecting a somewhat light romp, I got a much darker and cynical story about lies and secrets and the limits of family. I did end up liking it, once I realized what I was in for. And I'll probably pick up more of Gailey's work in the future. I'll just need to do a bit more research so I know what I'm in for before starting the next one.

I loved this book, and it's only further fueling my love of Becky Chambers. She's writes these quiet, gentle, speculative stories that deal with heavy philosophical questions. At the heart of this one is the quest for purpose. How do you find it, and do you need to? Is simply living enough? If it is enough, could you call that your purpose?  It's an interesting, circular argument. One that isn't terribly important to me because I know where I stand on it - living my little life in my little corner of the universe is enough for me. I don't need to strive for something more or bigger. But that's not true of the protagonist of this book, who feels woefully unfulfilled and spends most of the book trying to fill a hole in himself with some grand purpose. What I really loved is the mundanity of this hole. Dex cam from a loving family and found a supportive community. They are excellent at their chosen profession and seem to want for nothing. But, somehow, it isn't...

I gotta say, I struggled a lot with this novella. It started and ended very strongly. But the middle was so muddled I had a hard time following what was going on. I think it would have benefited from a longer length, which would have allowed for smoother transitions and some more background information. Then again, the jumpy transitions were kind of the point, as that folded in with the powers of one of the protagonists. I'd probably appreciate this book more if I read it again, though I'm not sure I ever will. I can see that it's important, and I'm trying to figure out whether I'm the intended audience or not. Was this meant to be a teaching book (making me part of the intended audience) or something more internal (and so not necessarily for me). It's probably that it was the latter but sold as the former, which is the root of my unmet expectations. At the least, it has me wanting to learn more about our justice and prison system.

I remember struggling a lot with LeGuin's books when I first began reading her. Every book felt like an argument. I never agreed with her fully, but I had to think hard to refine my own point of view, and I appreciated that. I always came out of her books feeling more sure of  myself for having thought deeper about the issues she presented. This book was different. I'm not sure if it's because my ideals have changed over the past decade or if I know what to expect from LeGuin now or is it's just where she was in her life, but this book was entirely on my wavelength. Like much of her work, it posits anarchy as an alternative to fascism and weaves in a healthy dose of feminism. Whatever it was, I loved this book. It might be my favorite of hers - though I think I also said that about the last LeGuin book. Maybe she's just converting me to her way of thinking.

I read this one for book club, which is another nod to book club pulling me out of my comfort zone. I'm not sure I ever would have picked this one up if not for book club. It follows two woman and the New York Public Library, flipping back and forth between the 1910s and the 1990s. It's about a decades-spanning mystery of missing books. But it's also about the feminist movement and generational trauma and loneliness.  Most interesting to me was the question at the heart of artists choosing to destroy their unpublished works upon death versus historians' desire to preserve them for posterity. It's easy to see how the perspective can shift over generations, as prominent people begin to fade into the past, becoming more symbols or icons than actual people. I do think some of the plots went a bit too far in order to tie the ending up with a neat bow. Henry's story, in particular, took me out of the book a little with how contrived it felt. But overall I enjoyed the ...

I'd been putting off Rhythm of War for a while, because it's such a big, intimidating book. I knew it would take me weeks to read, weeks when I wouldn't be able to read other books. But I'm trying to get away from the mindset that I have to keep reading more and more books. So I decided to finally commit to this one.  Almost as soon as I picked it up, I stopped being intimidated. I fell right into this story, and I remembered how wonderful it can be to spend an extended amount of time in a well-crafted world with interesting characters. The length allows for this story to be both epic and intimate. Huge, world-changing things are happening right alongside more personal struggles, and they all get equal weight in the narrative. I think I felt nearly every emotion over the course of reading this book. Sanderson is really a master of his craft, and I'm so excited to continue to read his work for years to come. The wider Cosmere starts to creep into this book more than ...